08 February 2015

Hiroshima ’85 / ヒロシマ’８５

Hiroshima
’85 / ヒロシマ’８５

Dates: August
18-23, 1985

Venue: Hiroshima
City Auditorium / 広島市公会堂

Poster Design: Yōji Kuri / ポスターデザイン 久里洋二

The first
Hiroshima International Animation Festival was held in 1985 under the motto “Love
and Peace”. The festival’s founders, Renzō Kinoshita (木下蓮三,
1936-1997) and Sayoko Kinoshita (木下小夜子, b.1945), had long believed in the ability of
animation to be a kind of international language that could bring understanding
between people from different cultural backgrounds. During the Cold War, the need for such a form
of communication was imperative. Last
year, the festival celebrated its 30th anniversary as the oldest ongoing
animation festival in Japan. The need
for “Love and Peace” in our troubled world means that the festival’s aims are
just as relevant today as they were in 1985.

How the Festival Began

The idea for
the animation festival dates back to 1972, when the Kinoshitas made their
independent animation short Made in Japan
(1972). It won the Grand Prix at the
inaugural New York Animation Festival.
The international recognition of their animation talent led them to
believe that they could make a success of their small production company Studio Lotus. They quickly realised that their brand of non-mainstream
animation was not commercially viable in Japan.
This led them to come up with the idea to establish an international
animation festival as a way of bringing attention to independent animation
while at the same time providing a networking forum for artists. They worked on this idea for 6 years to no
avail.

At the same
time, Studio Lotus was making Pica-Don(1978), an animated short that depicts the day the atomic bomb was dropped
on Hiroshima (learn more). Although
they had carefully researched their project and based it upon testimony and art
by victims of the atrocity, such a film had never been made before and the
Kinoshitas were uncertain of how the film would be received. They were delighted to discover that the people
of Hiroshima valued the film, and many citizens there encouraged them to
continue with their idea for an animation festival.

By the early
80s, the Kinoshitas were on the verge of giving up and moving to New York City
when the city of Hiroshima called them to officially ask them to run the
festival. The couple ran the festival together up until Renzō's untimely death in the winter of 1997. Since then, Sayoko has been at the helm. ASIFA-JAPAN,
which Sayoko Kinoshita has been president of since 1981, gave its patronage
to the festival. The festival has a
loyal brigade of volunteers, including long-time Studio Lotus assistant and ASIFA-JAPAN
general secretary, Makiko Oura.

The Mascot: Lappy

The festival’s
mascot Lappy, was designed by Renzō Kinoshita in 1985. A contest to find a name for the character was
held with 4,762 entries from all corners of Japan. The winning name, “Lappy”, brings together
the “L” from the motto “Love and Peace” and “appy” from “Happy”. In my series about the festival, I will be
using an image of Lappy as a stand in when no images for a winning film can be
found.

The Inaugural Festival

Animators representing 39 countries took part in the first festival. Paul Grimault, the pioneering French
animator, was the first International Honorary President. Japan’s legendary puppet animator Kihachirō Kawamoto, fresh off the
success of the NHK puppet spectacular Sangokushi, chaired
the International Selection Committee, while Belgian animator Raoul Servais chaired the International
Jury.

The first
Grand Prize went to legendary manga-ka Osamu
Tezuka for his innovative animated short Broken Down Film (おんぼろフィルム/Onporo Firumu, 1985) – a clever homage to early animation and silent
cinema. The Hiroshima Prize went to Canada’s
Richard Condie for his hilarious,
much-lauded short The Big Snit.

The Debut
Prize went to 17-year-old high school student Tsutomu Shinozuka for his silent short Wind a Minute and 40 Seconds (風1分40秒). The film
features in a wonderful clip I found on YouTube from a television special about
the Hiroshima festival with Kawamoto and Tezuka as guests:

It turns out
that young Shinozuka attended the same high school as Tezuka himself did. Although the film has no sound, Kawamoto
describes how you can feel the greatness of the wind in the way it has been
animated. They also discuss how it might
have been influenced by the movies of Akira Kurosawa. They agree that the film is unique and
surprising for someone so young and express their hope that he will go on to
make more films. I have not been able to
find any evidence that Shinozuka made any more animation after this one.

The
inaugural festival had more categories than today’s festival, with three
different film length categories and special sections for children’s films and
promotional films. In addition to the
competition programmes, a retrospective of the works of Ishu Patel was held with Patel himself in attendance. This proved a life-changing moment for one of
the audience members: a young Kōji
Yamamura, who has cited this screening event in many interviews as having
had a profound effect on him as an animator.
Yamamura’s Aquatic screened at
the second festival in 1987 and he went on to win many honours at the festival
over the years, culminating in the Grand Prize for Mt. Head in 2004. In 2008, he became the second person after Frédéric Back to win the Grand Prize twice with Franz Kafka’s A Country Doctor. At last
summer’s festival, Yamamura was on the International Jury.

Special Programs

In addition
to a retrospective of the work of Ishu Patel, retrospectives were held of the
works of other members of the selection committee and jury including Kawamoto,
Furukawa, Engel, Servais, Pojar, and honorary president Grimault. There was also a retrospective of the works
of John Halas, as well as special programs of World Animation (with a special
focus on Asia, USA, and Europe).

Other programs
included: “Panorama”, “Best of the World”, Animation for Children”, “Animation
for Peace”, “Computer Animation”.
Symposiums were held on “Computer Animation and Cell Animation” and “How
to Teach, How to Learn”. There was a seminar
on “Animation and Peace” and on “The Fun of Shiritori ‘85” and there was a
children’s workshop.